BIM UPDATE, MAKING SENSE OF THE LATEST CHANGES

The past eight months in the world of Building Information Modelling (BIM) have been no less confusing than the previous two years, despite the fact that BIM Level 2 has now been mandated by the Government for all centrally-funded projects, both locally and nationally.

In some cases, the notion of BIM has become rather “toxic”, with suggestions that it in fact increases overall costs, rather than reducing construction costs as initially suggested.

The lack of demonstrable evidence on post BIM projects, such as ‘cost-to-build’ data, also doesn’t help with the transition.

Despite this, SIG has seen the industry picking up the pace in embracing this new process of working, and has been heavily involved in ensuring that the role of the specialist building material distributor is working with the BIM process, and not inadvertently against it.

The SIG BIM Team has been busy working across all areas of Digital Construction to ensure that our suppliers are fully on board with the requirements of a BIM project from our customer’s perspective. We have also ensured that all of our SIG own brand products have data available that can be imported into a BIM Model to remove any unwanted complexities.

The team has also been heavily active with industry steering groups – such as BIM4FitOut and BIM4Housing – whose objectives, in part, are to direct various parts of the construction industry to present product data in a standardised format.

In order to be able to logically compare products, it’s vital that they are all presented in one group and in the same way. Unfortunately, many product templates in the market have made this seemingly simple process fraught with difficulty. In light of this, SIG is helping its customers and the rest of the industry to make the implementation of BIM as straightforward as possible.

For simple, transparent guidance on BIM, contact Jake Doyle from the SIG BIM team today on jakedoyle@sigplc.com